Eisai enters two joint research agreements to develop new antimalarial medicines

The first of these agreements is a joint development program with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis, Tennessee, United States, "St. Jude") and the non-profit public-private partnership Medicines for Malaria Venture (Geneva, Switzerland, "MMV"). Under this agreement, the three parties will conduct preclinical and clinical development of the oral antimalarial candidate compound SJ733. In addition to being rapidly effective and having the potential to cure in a single dose, SJ733 is non-artemisinin based, which means it could also be effective in patients for whom existing artemisinin-based malaria treatments have little effect due to recently increasing resistance.

The second agreement is a joint development program with the Broad Institute (Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, "Broad"), a collaborative research facility which involves researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Eisai and Broad will work together on the optimization of compounds screened from Broad’s library. These compounds are believed to be unique as they have a mechanism of action inhibiting protein synthesis, which is completely different to other existing antimalarial medicines. The goal is to identify those with the potential to be effective as new antimalarial medicines.

Malaria is caused by Plasmodium parasites that are transmitted to people through the bite of an infected mosquito. It is a deadly disease that led to an estimated 630,000 deaths, mostly among African children in 2012 alone,1 according to the World Health Organization. In recent years, there have been reports of strains of malaria having resistance to currently available medicines including the relatively new artemisinin combination therapies as well. Therefore the highest priority for researchers is to develop Single Exposure Radical Cure and Prophylaxis (SERCaP), a single, multi-component drug that would cure a treated patient after one exposure and provide substantial post-treatment protection from reinfection and recrudescence.

These unique projects were evaluated and each was awarded a grant by the Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT Fund), an international non-profit organization that aims to promote the discovery of new health technologies for eliminating infectious diseases prevalent in developing countries.

Under its human health care (hhc) philosophy, Eisai is determined to be proactive in improving access to medicines worldwide through partnerships with governments, international organizations, and other non-profit private sector organizations. Eisai is also actively engaged in several other research collaborations with Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Brazil’s national research agency, and MMV to discover and develop new medicines for the treatment of malaria. Through these collaborations, Eisai aims to make new treatments available as early as possible to patients with malaria and thereby further increase the healthcare benefits provided to the patients and their families.